Hi,
Asked few of my friend, couldnt find any answer.
1) Is that anyway to get notifying by machine when rendering is finish. Like smtp setup? and how? or manually check the progress using internet? (without vpn)

2) How can i sent render command to my workstation using network or internet (online)? without using vpn.

I understand some of the render farm software can do the job, but i only need to keep track 1 machine. Just wanna make sure everything is doing fine when i m away from my office, in case have any failure, i can call up render again.

My workstation, mac osx, 10.5.6, 16 gig ram, quad-core intel.

thanks.

cgbeige

08-14-2009, 05:50 PM

There are a couple options in OS X. The easiest one is to use the command line and ssh. What you can do is create a batch file with your render commands in it. an example:

Ok - for the part where you want to check on the status of your renders or create new ones from elsewhere, here is the trick: use a program called "screen" in the Terminal/ssh. It is built into OS X and most Unix / Linux environments and lets you create a virtual shell that you can log into remotely to check on. So you open screen by typing "screen", then execute your render batch. Then (very important), you need to detach the screen session (press alt-a and then hit the d key) so you can log into it again later from your iPhone or whatever ssh terminal you want to use. Otherwise, when you close the terminal window, it will kill the job. To get into the screen session to see your job again, just type "screen -r"

If you want to kill the screen session, type alt-a and then the k key.

The other option if you don't want to use the terminal is to just use VNC - open the Sharing System Preference settings and turn on screen sharing and in the options, enable VNC. I use a program called Jaadu VNC that's very good on the iPhone to do VNC to my server.

cgbeige

08-14-2009, 06:43 PM

oh - and if you want a program that will email you when a render is done, use Frantic Deadline for your render manager. I use it and it's very good. It's free for two users so you should be good

berniebernie

08-15-2009, 03:26 PM

you can use the -postRender command to launch a SMTP command to a chosen adress. I don't know where you can find SMTP software for mac. Google does.

cgbeige

08-15-2009, 05:05 PM

SMTP is installed by default - you just have to enable it:

http://www.freshblurbs.com/how-enable-local-smtp-postfix-os-x-leopard

tharrell

08-15-2009, 07:26 PM

A lot of ISPs will block SMTP from residential customers. Better to use the system's Mail app instead. I can see two easy options:

1. Make an automator workflow that looks like the attached thumbnail, then save it as an application. In this example I'm saving it in (my home folder)/Documents/maya/ as renderLog.app

Then make a post render MEL in your Render globals that invokes this:

system("open ~/Documents/maya/renderLog.app");

You can skip the get file and attachment action if your render log is too big on average to be emailed or you don't care and just want to know that the job's done.

2. Use something like Smedge or Muster as a render manager that's free for one or two workstations and let it handle mailing notifications for you.

Either way, pretty simple.

If you want to look into doing more complicated stuff via MEL/Applescript/OSAscript, check out this post:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-48329.html

Hope this helps,

--T

Edit: you can have maya render into a directory in your Sites folder, or /Library/Webserver/Documents/ and turn on web sharing if you'd like to be able to check frame progress remotely. Granted, you'll need to either not be behind a router/firewall, or send port 80 through to your Mac, but it's really really easy to do this and get a dyndns account at http://dyndns.org so you don't have to remember your Mac's IP address.

This way you can check frame progress from a laptop or even the crappiest web enabled mobile phones, and even preview finished frames.

Muster has a web backend that you can send commands via a smartphone with a decent browser with as well... you just have to open the appropriate port.

Anyhow, all of this stuff is of the 10-minute-hack variety, but it should all be super easy to set up while you work on getting a little more polished/custom solution if you need one.

cgbeige

08-16-2009, 12:42 AM

I could never get Smedge working. Frantic Deadline, while kind of crusty due to the mono UI, is great though and it's free for a couple clients. You just have to make sure to change the permissions of the Deadline Repository to allow you to write to it - dumb install. They are fixing it in the next SP.

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